This PhD project examines how nationalist ideas are expressed, shaped, and negotiated in Moroccan Malḥūn poetry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Malḥūn, a vernacular poetic tradition primarily transmitted orally, provides a rich corpus for exploring how poets conceptualized belonging, collective identity, and political imagination before and during the emergence of modern nationalism (in the 1930's and 1940's). The research focuses exclusively on the eleven anthologies compiled and published by the Royal Academy of Morocco. Through close textual analysis and historical contextualization, the project investigates how poets convey attachment to place, moral community, political authority, and religious legitimacy. By focusing on a genre outside the canon of elite written literature, this study aims to reveal alternative trajectories of Moroccan national consciousness and the role of popular culture in shaping early nationalist sentiments.

• languages, cultures and worldviews
• marocco

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